Maintenance, Repair and Rebuilding of Equipment - BD Instruments

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health intends to negotiate with Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), USBDB Contract Admin, 2350 Qume Drive, San Jose, California 95131 on an other than full and open competition basis to renew a service agreement for five (5) BD FACSymphony A5 Flow Cytometers, one (1) S6 Cell Sorter, four (4) High Throughput Samplers, and various lasers (see attached instrument list).  See the attached Statement of Work that defines the required service agreement support. 

This acquisition will be processed under FAR Part 12 – Acquisition for Commercial Items and will be made pursuant to the authority in FAR Part 13.501(a)(1).

Only one award will be made as a result of this solicitation.  This will be awarded as a firm-fixed price type of contract.

Period of Performance February 1, 2022 – January 31, 2023.  Service shall be performed in Bethesda, Maryland 20892, and Gaithersburg, Maryland 20878.  

The Flow Cytometry Core Facility and Satellite Laboratory of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) requires service for BD FACSymphony, S6 Cell Sorter, High Throughput Samplers, and lasers that are utilized seven (7) days per week to approximately 200 researchers at the VRC, and to the collaborators campus wide.  Each of these instruments support multiple experiments each day, and  each instrument is fully utilized.  Due to the heavy usage of the various BD instruments they must be repaired, recalibrated, and returned to operation as soon as possible after failure.  If systems were put out of action due to lack of maintenance or mechanical failure the ability of the investigators in the VRC to conduct their research would be severely compromised.  Fully functional equipment is critically important due to the nature of the work in the VRC core facility as more than 75% of the work is with freshly explanted, or very short term cultured (hours) cells prepared from various organs.  These cells are extremely fragile and die less than 12 hours after they are harvested.  Some of the samples used are genetically modified and are extremely valuable.  Therefore, these experiments are extraordinarily expensive to perform.  If a flow cytometer malfunctions, and cannot be repaired within 4-6 hours, the experiment will be lost because the samples have already been prepared.  BD has five (5) local service engineers, and usually two (2) or more of them are at NIH facilities on any given day.  Having a BD local service engineer on the NIH campus to repair a problem within 6 or less hours of the breakdown  has saved the program many, many thousands of dollars of samples that would have been lost if the equipment had not been timely repaired.  Timely response is only possible with a sizeable local service force.  If an engineer had to fly in or drive in from a remote location, there could be up to a 24-hour delay resulting in loss of the time, materials, animal or human samples and reagents already invested in the experiment.  The BD service engineers understand our ongoing experiments and are aware of the characteristics of the old and new BD platforms and may help us troubleshoot maintenance issues that could affect experimental outcome.  Using a different company would require extensive re-optimization of immune assays, and revalidation by the NIAID Vaccine Immune T-Cell and Antibody Laboratory, and thereby introduce significant downtime and harm the mission of the VRC to develop and test new vaccine candidates.  All original equipment manufacturer (OEM) parts, accessories, and software must be compatible with existing equipment no substitutions allowed.  BD service engineers has the knowledge deemed necessary to maintain the equipment in accordance with the required specifications and have local certified engineers/technicians that can troubleshoot and repair in an expeditious manner, and parts to maintain the equipment as they are the only known local vendor to provide maintenance services.

The statutory authority for this sole source requirement is 41 U.S.C. 253 (c) (1) as implemented by FAR 6.302-1 only one source available, no substitutions possible.  THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR COMPETITIVE QUOTATIONS.  All responsible sources who can provide the required service agreement may submit a response that could be considered by email (subject line to reference NIAID-NOI-22-2101461) to Tonia Alexander at talexander@niaid.nih.gov, by 10:00 am eastern standard time January 31, 2022.  All information furnished must be in writing and must contain sufficient detail to allow NIAID to determine if it can meet the above specifications described herein.  All responses received by the closing date of this solicitation will be considered by the Government.  A determination not to compete this requirement, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the Government.  Any responses received by NIAID after this date and exact time specified is late and will not be considered.